Owner Biography: Formerly belonged to Lilias Dowling nee Dickson (1816-1869) and Willoughby James Dowling (1814-1849). This collection of sheet music was bound for its owner, Lilias Dowling, in Sydney around 1840, and is currently the earliest-known locally bound collection surviving in Australia. The daughter of wealthy Sydney industrialist John Dickson, Lilias married Willoughby Dowling in 1834.

 The volume contains over 40 pieces of music, most purchased from Sydney music stores in the 1830s. It also contains some of Australia’s earliest surviving manuscript copies of songs, and the only known copy of Instructions in singing (c1826–30) by the London-based teacher, composer and publisher William Grosse. The many pencilled annotations that Lilias and her teachers made on the music offer a unique opportunity to re-create how this music might have sounded in an early Sydney drawing room. 

The most likely route for this volume of bound music from Lilias Dowling to its current location at Rouse Hill Estate was through Lilias’ sister, Susannah Daintrey (nee Dowling) (1829-1898). Susannah’s son Arthur Daintrey (1859-1939) married Margaret McNamara (1864-1946) in 1885. It is possible that the volume of music was given by Susannah to either her daughter-in-law Margaret, or Margaret's musical sister Blanche Smith (nee McNamara) (1876-1929). The volume may have been passed by either Margaret or Blanche to Blanche’s daughter Marjorie ‘Peggy’ Smith (1903-1984), who married Gerald Terry (1904-1999) of Rouse Hill in 1934.